One of my favorite days of the year! HURRAY!!! So, in celebration of this wicked day, let's learn a little more about this special night. Halloween dates back two thousand years to Britain and Ireland and a Celtic festival called Samhain which markerd the end of the “season of the sun” and the beginning of the “season of darkness and cold.” The first of November was considered the end of the summer period, when herds were returned from pasture and land tenures were renewed. It was also a time when the souls of the dead were believed to return to visit their homes. People set bonfires on hilltops for relighting their hearth fires for the winter and to frighten away evil spirits. They sometimes wore masks and other disguises to avoid being recognized by the ghosts they believed were present. That’s how witches, hobgoblins, fairies and demons came to be associated with the day. The period was also thought to be favourable for divination on matters such as marriage, health, and death. When the Romans conquered the Celts in the 1st century AD, they added their own festivals of Feralia, commemorating the passing of the dead, and of Pomona, the goddess of the harvest. In the 7th century AD, Pope Boniface IV established All Saints’ Day, originally on May 13, and in the following century, it was moved to November 1. The evening before All Saints’ Day became a holy, or hallowed eve and, thus, Halloween. By the end of the Middle Ages, the secular and the sacred days had merger. In North America, the celebration of Halloween was forbidden among most of the early colonists, but in the 1800s some festivals celebrating the harvest developed and incorporated elements of Halloween. Irish immigrants brought versions of the tradition with them to America in the nineteenth century. Other western countries adopted the holiday in the late twentieth century. Happy Halloween, folks!

It seems that surnames, as we know them, emerged during the Middle Age, when it was common to use a person's occupation, physical characteristics, the place where he/she lived or even variations from the father's name to differentiate people with the same name.

And no, I'm not going to say anything about smelly supernatural apparitions ("what are they feeding you?"). Turns out that scientists believe that some gases like methane can cause people to believe they're being haunted. One case, described in Discovery News, tells about a family that lived in a house near a garbage dump. They experienced headaches, reported bursts of fire that singed the walls and smelled noxious odors that resembled brimstone. It was later explained that infrasound and electromagnetic waves only explained some of the issues in the house under the high-tension wires. The seeping gas from the garbage decomposition was the cause of the other "haunting" occurrences.

What a Waheela may look like, and its size compared to and average man (Image found on Monster Wiki)

You can never have too much cryptozoology, can you? Not on this blog, at least! Teehee! Well, today I'm going to talk a little about the Waheela, a wolf-likecryptid usually seen on Nahanni Valley in the Northwest Territories of Canada. It has also been reported in areas of Michigan and Alaska.CryptozoologistIvan Sanderson thought that the waheela might represent a relict population of Amphicyonids, prehistoric bear-dogs (but which he incorrectly referred to as dire wolves, which were true, but not what the waheela is said to be). The waheela is similar to the Shunka Warakin, but inhabits a far more northern habitat. It is also similar to Amarok, a giant wolf from Inuit mythology. It is reported to travel in groups of two or three, and not in large packs as modern wolves do.

What if monsters, robots and aliens had been a real part (I consider them so, as preposterous as it may seem) of the world's history? That is what the book "Alternative Histories of the World" is all about. I haven't read it yet, but, from what I've seen so far, it is, in one word, genius. Wish it all was true - and who can say for sure it isn't?

You know that moment in fairy tales and other fictional stories (and some non-fictional too) when everything seems doomed and, out of nowhere, something happens that changes all for better? Well, that's an eucatastrophe. This term was coined by my beloved J. R. R. Tolkien in his work "On Fairy-Stories" (1947), and can be defined as "sudden turn of events at the end of a story which ensure that the protagonist does not meet some terrible, impending, and very plausible doom". He formed the word by affixing the Greek prefix eu, meaning "good", to catastrophe, the word traditionally used in classically-inspired literary criticism to refer to the "unraveling" or "conclusion" of a drama's plot. So, next time you stumble upon such an event, you know what to call it.

A Galvanized Corpse, a litography by Henry R. Robinson, 1850 (Image found on Library of Congress)

I love reading about antique scientists and their (sometimes) crazy theories about life and how it works on us humans. Galvanism, in that area, is one of my favorite subjects - and yes, it is partly because I adore Shelley's Frankenstein.In medicine, the term "galvanism" refers to any form of medical treatment involving the application of pulses of electric current to body tissues provoking the contraction muscles that are stimulated by the electric current. If you thought about frog legs, you're on the right path. This effect was named by Alessandro Volta after his contemporary, the scientist Luigi Galvani, who investigated the effect of electricity on dissected animals in the 1780's and 1790's. Galvani himself, though, referred to the phenomenon as "animal electricity", believing that he had discovered a distinct form of electricity. Before that, Isaac Newton had theorized a link between the "animal spirits" described in antiquity and the subtle electrical fluid hypothesized by physicists. Scientists Caldini and Fontana had realized that merely bringing an electrified rod within their close proximity would stimulate frogs. However, it was Galvani who determined that electricity was present within the animal itself. Based on his frog experiments he deduced that the contractions were caused by the flow of electricity and, when one occurred, a nervo-electric fluid was conducted from the nerves to the muscle. Nowadays, the study of galvanic effects is called electrophysiology and the term "galvanism" is only used in historical contexts. I wonder if scientists say "IT'S ALIVE!!!!" everytime they put a current on a dead animal. I know I would!

A strange creature was lurking in rural Wisconsin between 1989 and 1991. On three separate occasions, three teenage girls reported encounters with a manlike beast near Bray Road in Elkhorn, Wis. All accounts described an aggressive "werewolf" creature with pointy ears, dark brown fur and large claws. In spite of the disbelief of many citizens, a local news reporter, Linda Godfrey, began investigating the sightings and stumbled upon a much larger story that gained national attention. Thanks to Godfrey's reporting, state and national news organizations picked up the story of the beast of Bray Road and more people came forward to relay their own sightings. Among them was an employee of the Elkhorn Burger King who witnessed the beast running along the road; she described it as a "very powerful, fast runner." Several others reported strange footprints around the area and Elkhorn's animal control began a file that held numerous accounts of "unidentified walking animals." One gentleman, Joe Shackleman from nearby Racine, Wis., came forward to tell the story his father shared with him many decades prior. According to Shackleman, his father was a night watchman at a convent and observed a beast standing on a Native American burial ground in 1936. He said the creature had three shriveled fingers and a body covered in dark fur, and that it was more than 6 feet (1.8 meters) tall. The beast was very menacing with a low growl and emitted a strong odor. Could this be the same creature witnessed in the 1990s? No one is positive, but the similarities are striking. Now, more than a decade later, the media frenzy has died down, but the citizens of Elkhorn still keep watch for the return of the beast on Bray Road.

J. Howard Miller's "We Can Do It!" poster from 1943 (Image found on Wikipedia)

Whenever I need some feminist inspiration, I look upon this poster. But only today I got to know its history!The "We Can Do It!" was actually an American wartime propaganda (WWII, to be precise) poster produced in 1943 by J. Howard Miller for the Westinghouse Electric company as an inspirational image to improve worker morale. It was not initially intended just for women - they had another 41 posters featuring mostly men, work-people and managers. It is generally thought that this particular poster was based on a black-and-white service photograph of Geraldine Hoff, a factory worker. However, this poster was seen very little during that period (it was only used in the factory for two weeks, more or less). But it was rediscovered in the early 1980's and, then, widely reproduced in many ways, to promote feminism and other political issues. It is often called "We Can Do It!" or "Rosie the Riveter" poster, the last after the iconic figure of a strong female war production worker. After this period of rediscovery, observers often assumed that the image was always used as a call to inspire women workers to join the war effort. That was not the case. During the war, the image was strictly internal to Westinghouse, displayed only during February 1943, and was not for recruitment but to exhort already-hired women to work harder. Nowadays, feminists and others have seized upon the uplifting attitude and apparent message to remake the image into many different forms, including self empowerment, campaign promotion, advertising, and parodies.

Two hundred and sixteen years ago, André-Jaques Garnerin made the world's first parachute jump. Although he was inside a basket, his invention was extraordinaire. The 28 year-old man jumped from a moving baloon over 900m high with nothing to stop his fall but a 7m silk cloth which resembled a giant umbrella. When he reached the expected hight, the French engineer cut the cord that held the baloon to his basket, automatically opening the parachute. He landed safely on Parc Monceau, in Paris, even though he had some problems getting back to the ground - turbulence, which damaged the object quite a bit. The basic principles of the invention, however, remain unaltered until today. After the jump, Garnerin received the title of "France's Oficial Aeronaut", and became internationally acknowledged.